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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/28257474">Lime Candies</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/othersunsets/pseuds/othersunsets'>othersunsets</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Haikyuu!!</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Basically lots of feelings, Denial of Feelings, F/M, Feels, Fluff, Gender-neutral Reader, Kind of angsty, Kozume Kenma is Bad at Feelings, M/M, Other, Romantic Fluff, Warm and Fuzzy Feelings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-12-23</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-12-23</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-10 19:47:27</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,007</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/28257474</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/othersunsets/pseuds/othersunsets</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>A Kenma "five times" fic.</p>
<p>Or: five times Kenma wanted to tell you how he felt, and the one time he finally does.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Kozume Kenma &amp; Reader, Kozume Kenma/Reader</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>3</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>80</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Lime Candies</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>i<br/>Kenma almost chokes on a gulp of water when you tell him his hair looks good. </p>
<p>His hair is two toned-the roots hopelessly undone, the silky strands almost always damp from the bottle of water him and Kuroo sometimes pour over their heads after an especially strenuous practice to cool themselves down. The two of you are sitting on the side of the street together, waiting for Kenma to gain the strength to walk back home, and the words fly from your mouth before you can stop them. </p>
<p>The two of you have only been dating for a few weeks at this point. Kenma whispers a quiet ‘thank you’ to you, his cheeks stained pink, before looking back down at the ground. He assumes you have to be lying. He pushes the fluttering feeling away, and tells himself not to speak. </p>
<p>ii<br/>When there’s an important game coming up, Kenma’s hands shake ever so slightly, at odds with his impeccable accuracy and calm demeanor on the court. You hold his hands in your own, and bring them to your chest, kissing his forehead to calm him down. </p>
<p>When you let go, and walk off, telling him you’ll be rooting for him in the stands, Kenma wrings his hands together, as if he’s trying to memorize the feeling of your skin making contact with his own.</p>
<p>Watching Kenma play volleyball is like watching a bird take flight for the first time. You feel every second as if you were on court with him, and sometimes it does look like at any second, he may sprout wings and soar through the sky. </p>
<p>He locks eyes with you once, during a water break, and he gets this urge to call out to you, to cut through the noise of the gymnasium. He gets this strange, yet sure feeling, that if he whispered your name in the midst of all the shouts and plastic signs and sweat, that somehow you would still hear him. </p>
<p>iii<br/>The first time you kiss Kenma, his mouth tastes like the lime candies he had been eating. His mouth is warm against yours, and familiar, as if you both had been there before, in another time and space.</p>
<p>After you pull away, Kenma puts his head in his hands so you won’t see the bright red blush forming across his face. </p>
<p>He’s so out of it that he walks straight into the locker room door before practice, forgetting to open it. Kuroo and the rest of the team tease him for the rest of the day. </p>
<p>But he doesn’t care. Because you kissed him. </p>
<p>He holds his phone in his hands and wonders if he should call you, if he should call you and watch all of the words fall out of him, and wash away, like petals in a stream. He puts his phone away.</p>
<p>iv<br/>Kenma smells like dryer sheets, but the good kind, the kind that has a fancy scent associated with it, like Ocean Breeze. </p>
<p>Sometimes, when Kenma plays video games, the tip of his tongue sticks out of his mouth in concentration. </p>
<p>Kenma loves it when you play with his hair. Sometimes, he rests his head in your lap and you run your fingers through the soft strands until he falls asleep. </p>
<p>Kenma rubs his eyes with the heel of his hands sometimes, and you gently pull his hands away from his face, telling him to be careful not to hurt himself. He says his eyes get tired often, because he stares at screens all day. Dark circles around his eyes betray the full extent of his fatigue.  You say you’re worried about him. </p>
<p>Kenma feels that if he were to part his lips, then all the words would come fluttering out of him like the gentle flapping of a butterfly wing. He wonders if you would let those words rest on your fingers like a monarch, and watch as they flapped once, then twice on your skin before flying away. </p>
<p>He presses his lips into a firm line to stop himself from telling you everything. </p>
<p>v <br/>There are days where you both laugh until your sides hurt. There are days when you hold him as he cries. There are days where you lie side by side, the steady sound of the fan and the occasional comment being the only sounds that permeate throughout the room. </p>
<p> There are days when he reminds you to put on a sweater, because it’s cold out, and you wish you could be wrapped up in his warmth instead, you wish that there was no need for outerwear, that his voice and his laugh and his everything could be wrapped up in you and that would be enough. </p>
<p>You tell him as much. He watches you for a moment, about to speak, before he looks away. He mashes his lips together. His fingers are tangled up in yours, and they tremble slightly, because you are something he can’t afford to lose. </p>
<p>vi<br/>In spring, Kenma writes you a love letter. The words are scrawled onto paper, the ink smudged from hesitation. The paper is slightly crumpled, as if he read it over and over, and kept it in his backpack, meaning to finally give it to you, meaning to finally etch his heart out on paper and hand it to you, not knowing if you were going to rip it up or hold it close to your own. </p>
<p> You wish you could write everything that you feel for him down but you can’t. The words are all jumbled together, so many moments, all so important, all so vital, all telling a story, like wayward clouds in a pink-tinged sky. You want to lie down with him in a field somewhere, your hands intertwined, and point at those clouds from time to time. </p>
<p>You wait for him after practice. You put the paper up against his chest and try to convey what you feel without words.</p>
<p>Kenma smiles against your mouth. He tastes like lime candies.</p>
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